1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure generally relates to business information services. In particular, the present disclosure relates to corporate families, business information, linkage, multinational corporations, business intelligence, global data collection, and other fields.
2. Background of the Invention
Some providers of corporate linkage information provide incomplete, inaccurate, and outdated information. Often, data comes only from annual reports or is updated quarterly. Fragmented and uncoordinated update processes drive quality down and costs up. The conventional one-record-at-a-time approach to maintenance has reduced effectiveness. For example, local updates that are uncoordinated with global updates can introduce inconsistencies and errors. There is a need for a provider to pro-actively seek out changes in corporate linkage information and provide complete, accurate and timely information.
There is a need for monitoring for changes in company locations. New and closed locations need to be identified and added to stored data without the expense of telephone calls. This would provide more complete and accurate lists of corporate linkage so that customers are able to identify newly opened location sooner for better account penetration and not waste efforts on locations that are no longer operating.
There is a need for updating stored information with information from companies themselves as well as third parties through a matching process. This would reduce the time and effort needed to make these comparisons and improve the consistency and accuracy of the comparisons. There is a need to automate manual processes to enable them to be repeated periodically and to implement a monitoring process to identify changes. This would provide more complete and accurate corporate linkages. Stored data would be confirmable, ensuring the accuracy of name and address for locations and providing investigation for unmatched records. Coded match results would allow determination of missing and duplicate locations. This would provide more accurate and complete corporate linkage.
There is a need for batch updates to global files to ensure data is updated correctly and consistently. This would eliminate data entry mistakes and increase speed of updates. This would provide more complete corporate linkage.